Chapter Text
He was right.
Wasn’t that what made it ache?
That bitter little truth, smoldering at the back of his throat like a live wire, waving its smoking barrel in his face— just near enough to mock him, but never close enough to grasp. A revelation too late, too loud, too cruel. It seared his glossa like a brand meant for sinners.
Grief was bitter. Regret, sour. But this? This was unpalatable. This was salt rubbed into centuries of wounds. Left to fester, left to rot .
It had taken too long— far too long— for D-16 to read the writing on the wall. Streaked in rust and old oil, marred with gore and hesitation, that message had always been there. He simply refused to see it.
Now? Now it roared like klaxons through his processor. And still, he choked on it.
A truth forced down his intake like a shard of glass. A reality he was no longer allowed to ignore. If his optics had remained covered just a little longer, maybe— maybe — they wouldn’t have reached this point.
At least… not by choice.
How long had it been now? A decade ? A century? No— millennia. The war had burned endlessly on the embers of his own regret, a fire never fully extinguished, just fanned by time and pride.
He still remembered what he fought for. That part remained. But even Megatron— even he — had to admit the Decepticon cause had twisted far beyond its origin. Perverted into something monstrous.
It wasn’t fury anymore. It wasn’t even fire.
He had been angry once. Righteously, violently so. Who wouldn’t be, after being lied to so thoroughly? After seeing truth obscured by decades of tradition and deceit? Of course he’d been furious— anyone would be.
But now?
Now that flame gasped for breath, sputtering on the last dregs of its fuel. There was no fire left in him, only smoke.
Megatron was tired.
The war had been avoidable. His exile, deserved. His vengeance, a blunt instrument swinging in every direction. A hammer with no grip on restraint. A spark once noble, now drowned in ash and fallout.
In his obsession with toppling a corrupt throne, he had built one of his own— brick by bloody brick, no better than the tyrant he once sought to destroy.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
Becoming the very thing he despised hurt more than the molten decal Sentinel had branded into his armor. He could still feel the sear. Still smell the burning metal. Still hear the agony of his own scream.
That pain never left. It wouldn’t . Not for as long as he remained online.
But the true source of his rage? It was never the Primes. Not really.
He had admired them once. Their strength. Their clarity. The responsibility they carried.
Before he saw what that title had become.
Before he saw it corrupted— bastardized into a crown of chains, polished in arrogance and ego, handed down not for merit but for bloodline and obedience.
A symbol twisted into something unrecognizable.
He wasn’t angry at Orion. Not in hindsight.
Not truly.
But D-16 … he was angry. Furious. Fractured.
Because Orion had been right.
Because that truth had come from him .
D-16 had walked through life blind, too stubborn to question the darkness. Too loyal. Too trusting. And it had been Orion who kicked down that door— naive, idealistic Orion Pax, chasing justice like a boy chasing stars, too earnest to know what hellfire awaited him.
And D-16— Primus help him— had followed.
He had defended Orion by choice. He had thrown himself into the flames willingly, stood beside him when he could have walked away.
And for what?
For a friend who saw too much. For a truth he could never unsee.
He’d been irrational at the death of his hero— crumbling like a cathedral built on sand, the weight of his ideals dragging him beneath the tide of his own unraveling. The world he believed in cracked beneath his pedes and swallowed him whole, like penance for daring to believe too deeply in anything at all.
It was his fault.
It was all his fault.
And yet, he couldn’t stop. Couldn’t wrench the gears of this machine into reverse. Couldn’t extinguish the storm he’d become. He wasn’t wrong— not entirely.
But he had gone too far.
Was it pride that kept his servos spinning the wheels of war? Or something worse— stubbornness shaped into steel, worn like armor until it fused with his frame?
They called him bullheaded. Obstinate. Impossible. Not with awe, but with warning. Not because they admired his resilience, but because they feared the ruin he dragged behind him.
This reign— this rule carved from screams and scorched stone— it could end. It should end. The war was a catastrophe he could have stopped before it even began. The mountains of bodies didn’t have to exist. Entire generations could have lived, sparked into a world without fire in the sky.
If only he had accepted it sooner.
If he had just acknowledged the truth Orion tried to show him— if he had only listened—
This carnage… this was his doing.
The truth towered above him now, wreathed in smoke and wailing circuitry. It stared him down like a god too old to mourn anymore. How many more? How many more would die at his word? How many would join the endless tally of sparks extinguished beneath his boot?
His optics swept over the silent wreckage. Fallen soldiers crumpled across the battlefield like discarded memories. The infrastructure lay mangled, twisted like ribs torn from a planet’s chest. Energon sprayed in arcs too familiar, too red.
It wasn’t just numbers. Not to him.
It was the weight of every name he couldn't forget.
This wasn't the revolution he fought for.
This wasn’t justice.
And yet, to fall back now— to raise his servos and surrender— would be to admit the old world still had worth. That the gears of the machine he once sought to dismantle could simply keep turning. That a Prime’s rule, or a council’s judgment, could ever be trusted again.
To yield would be to invalidate every wound carved into his spark.
He’d believed in strength. Believed the strong could govern themselves. That they should never kneel to gilded idols cloaked in ritual and decay. He believed in noblesse oblige— power used with duty, not for dominion.
But even now, he saw the flaw. Even now, the cracks showed.
Letting the strong lead unchecked had given rise to monsters.
Like him.
Still, Megatron would rather face the muzzle of his own cannon than confess his cause was unjust. Extreme , yes. Ruthless, absolutely. But not unjust.
The Council of Primes had failed them. The Sentinel had failed them. The system was broken long before he ever laid a charge beneath its walls.
He’d just lit the match.
And what then? If one leader— just one— succumbed to greed? If power swallowed him whole as it had others before?
One rotten spark could poison a world.
No, it wouldn’t last. Not the way things were. Not if they built anew on the same bones.
Megatron exhaled slowly through his vents, the sound ragged, weary— like the slow collapse of something ancient. The writing was back. Always the writing. Still etched into the wall like prophecy— bold and inescapable, ticking down to his last day.
And in this silence, finally unbroken, he allowed himself to sit with it. To feel the loneliness like a weight against his armor.
It wasn’t peaceful. Never that.
But it was familiar— like a wound one forgets how to treat, left too long to scab over with rot. The silence clung to him now like dust to an unpolished blade. Thick. Heavy. Not oppressive, but expectant. Waiting.
The throne room was colder than he remembered.
It no longer echoed with voices— no barks of command, no strategies argued into shape. Just shadow and stone. What once served as the war’s heart had become its tomb: a mausoleum of metal and ambition. The high ceilings swallowed even the sound of his breath, making him feel— at last— small .
Even he, the mighty Decepticon tyrant, felt small now.
Megatron sat alone, elbows resting heavily on the armrests of a throne that no longer felt like his. His helm dipped forward, the weight of memory sagging through every joint. The wind rattled faintly through cracked stone and scorched iron, a ghost of Kaon’s old fires, but he no longer stirred at its cry.
The war had aged the steel of this place as much as it had aged him.
The flickering ember-glow of the overhead lights swept across the room in lazy arcs, dancing over claw marks and shattered sigils— ruins of loyalty, of rebellion, of rage. One beam caught the curve of his fusion cannon where it hung dormant at his side, gleaming like a half-buried blade waiting for its final draw.
His optics dimmed— not in contempt, nor calculation. Just reflection.
How long had it been since he laughed?
How long since someone had called him anything but Lord Megatron ?
He didn’t even hear the door open.
But he heard the footsteps.
Slow. Hesitant. Not the confident gait of a seasoned soldier, but the tread of someone crossing hallowed ground— unsure if they even had the right to.
A pause. Then the faint, nervous rustle of a data-slab being adjusted in trembling hands.
The voice came soft. Careful.
“Lord Megatron. The Autobots have moved to attack the southern front. Optimus Prime is among them.”
The words rang out like a chime through fog. Clear. Unwanted. Final.
The voice was young. Unweathered. Not Soundwave, not Shockwave— not one of the old guards who knew the weight those words carried. Likely a junior officer, too new to remember who Megatron used to be. Too new to remember the sound of his voice when it still carried conviction instead of corrosion.
Megatron didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
The words had pierced through the haze like a blade through rusted armor— swift, clean, and inevitable.
There it was.
The final page.
The chapter that had been writing itself since the first drop of energon hit the soil. He could almost hear the sentence— Optimus Prime is among them — etch itself into the stone, one last line before the book closed and the story ended.
He exhaled.
And rose.
Not with defiance. Not with fury. But with the weary grace of a god walking to his own funeral. The servo that grasped his cannon was steady— not from strength, but repetition. This dance was old. Too old.
His joints groaned with the motion, like an ancient monolith stirring after millennia of stillness. He moved like a statue made animate not by life, but by obligation.
A monument to war, dressed in dust and silence.
He did not spare the officer a glance.
He didn’t have to.
The young mech bowed and turned, retreating as quickly as he'd come—his footsteps fleeing like echoes behind a tomb door swinging shut.
Megatron stood still for a moment longer.
Alone again.
As always.
He tilted his helm back slightly, as if listening for something that no longer existed—a voice, a cause, a reason. The silence answered only with its hollow breath. Not even the wind dared intrude.
And then, in the quiet, something surfaced.
Not spoken. Not voiced.
Just a murmur at the hollow center of his own spark.
Let this be the last time.
Let it be the final war. The final scream. The last broken promise.
Let no one rise again to repeat his sins.
Let this be the end.
His cannon powered up with a low, familiar whine. The sound of inevitability.
One of two titans would fall today.
He turned toward the open door.
The war had gone on long enough.